Monday, January 30, 2017

GO FORTH

One of the features on the upcoming website is going to be a store.
That's great right?
You will be able to order items that are easy to ship like the 2 items shown in the photos, along with t-shirts, the staple railroad spike hooks and.....and....uh....and...
That's the hard part.
We can make just about anything.
I'm extremely confident in that statement. But the creative process is the most frustrating part. Always has been and always will be.
It's not always a question of "what" to make. Sometimes the question is "is this something I can feel good about making 10,15,20,100 times a week?"
At the end of the day, any given piece that comes out of our shop has only had a maximum of 4 hands on it.
It's me and Zack and that is it.
This weekend, we took our son to the Museum of Science and Industry.
I had a hard time containing my excitement because apparently a lot has fuckin' changed since my 5th grade class field trip.
As someone who is sort of in the manufacturing business, it was very interesting and exciting until we reached a thing the called "the TOYMAKER3000".
You put a $5 bill in a machine, choose a color, type your kids name in, and then you watch the completely automated process of a TOP being assembled all the way through packaging and distribution.
Max was elated with his new top, and I was utterly disgusted and depressed.
Prior to visiting the TOYMAKER3000 I was fixated on a World War 2 section of the museum where it was showing factories bustling with humanity making things that would ultimately decimate humanity, but none the less, it was humans working side by side. A lot of the photos depicted these men and women looking filthy and tired, but what I noticed in most of the photos, was that they were smiling.
Then we scurry over to the toy machine, and no human. No need,
Somewhere down the road of life, humanity has become de-valued.
Not just in a sense of work or industry, but in general.
Fuckin' women having their heads chopped of in Saudi Arabia, children starving in Syria and Venezuela and a million other places, people gunned down in the streets of Chicago, and a long list of daily atrocities against humanity, and why?
Because the human life has been de-valued.
Even down to dating. Now, people just go to Match.com or Tinder or Christian Dating, and you just scroll through, find a mate, and boom...yer balls deep in someone.
There's a value to going to a bar, or a party, striking up a conversation with a person, and either striking out or hitting a home run, that has been stripped away.
It's fuckin sad, disgusting, and pathetic, and that's become the norm.
We have a rule for guests in my house, and that rule is, when you walk in, you put your phone on the counter.
If you're gonna be here, then be HERE. You don't like it? Get the fuck out. Period.
The answer isn't a wall, or a tax, or a embargo, or a war.
The answer is a value and respect for humanity, the human hand, the human brain, the human heart.
I can't say it's THE answer, but I can say it's MY answer.
Go forth and try to be human.